Mary Anne Evans, writing pseudonymously as George…

Mary Anne Evans, writing pseudonymously as George Eliot, examines English provincial society in Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life.

It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes.

During the following year Eliot had resumed work, fusing together several stories into a coherent whole, and during 1871–72 the novel had appeared in serial form.

The first one-volume edition is published in 1874, and attracts large sales.

Martin Amis and Julian Barnes will cite it as probably the greatest novel in the English language.